MATLAB® and Design Recipes for Earth Sciences

How to Collect, Process and Present Geoscientific Information

verfasst von: Martin Trauth, Elisabeth Sillmann

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

The overall aim of the book is to introduce students to the typical course followed by a data analysis project in earth sciences. A project usually involves searching relevant literature, reviewing and ranking published books and journal articles, extracting relevant information from the literature in the form of text, data, or graphs, searching and processing the relevant original data using MATLAB, and compiling and presenting the results as posters, abstracts, and oral presentations using graphics design software. The text of this book includes numerous examples on the use of internet resources, on the visualization of data with MATLAB, and on preparing scientific presentations. As with its sister book MATLAB Recipes for Earth Sciences–3rd Edition (2010), which demonstrates the use of statistical and numerical methods on earth science data, this book uses state-of-the art software packages, including MATLAB and the Adobe Creative Suite, to process and present geoscientific information collected during the course of an earth science project. The book's supplementary electronic material (available online through the publisher's website) includes color versions of all figures, recipes with all the MATLAB commands featured in the book, the example data, exported MATLAB graphics, and screenshots of the most important steps involved in processing the graphics.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Scientific Information in Earth Sciences

Abstract

This book is based on an undergraduate course taught at the University of Potsdam in Germany (http://uni-potsdam.de), as was also the case with its sister book MATLAB Recipes for Earth Sciences–3rd Edition (Trauth 2010). The objective of this course was to guide students through the typical progression of a scientific project. Such projects usually start with a search of the relevant literature in order to review and rank published books and journal articles, to extract information (as text, data, maps, or graphs), and to search, process and visualize data, compiling the results and presenting them as posters, abstracts and oral presentations (talks). The course was first held for second-year students in earth sciences during the 2010–11 winter semester, and then repeated in the following summer semester. The original plan was to hold the course in a computer pool with fifteen workstations. However, an unexpectedly large number of students enrolled for the first presentation, which had more than sixty participants. This led to the course being held in a lecture hall with a projector, a microphone, and a speaker system. There was also a table for the instructor’s laptop and equipment, and wireless access to the Internet; the students used their own private laptops.